1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for producing a liquid ejecting head for ejecting a desired liquid by generation of a bubble with application of thermal energy to the liquid. More particularly, the invention relates to a method for producing a liquid ejecting head using a movable member which is constructed so as to be displaced in response to the generation of a bubble. Further, the present invention concerns a liquid ejecting head, a head cartridge using the liquid ejecting head, a liquid ejecting apparatus, and a head kit.
The present invention is applicable to equipment such as a printer, a copying machine, a facsimile machine having a communication system, a word processor having a printer portion or the like, and an industrial recording device combined with various processing device or processing devices, in which the recording is effected on a recording material such as paper, thread, fiber, textile, leather, metal, plastic resin material, glass, wood, ceramic and so on.
In this specification, xe2x80x9crecordingxe2x80x9d means not only forming an image of letter, figure or the like having specific meanings, but also includes forming an image of a pattern not having a specific meaning.
2. Related Background Art
An ink jet recording method of so-called bubble jet type is known in which an instantaneous state change resulting in an instantaneous volume change (bubble generation) is caused by application of energy such as heat to the ink, so as to eject the ink through the ejection outlet by the force resulted from the state change by which the ink is ejected to and deposited on the recording material to form an image formation. As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,723,129, a recording device using the bubble jet recording method generally comprises an ejection outlet for ejecting the ink, an ink flow path in fluid communication with the ejection outlet, and an electrothermal transducer as energy generating means disposed in the ink flow path.
With such a recording method is advantageous in that, a high quality image, can be recorded at high speed and with low noise, and a plurality of such ejection outlets can be located at high density, and therefore, small size recording apparatus capable of providing a high resolution can be provided, and color images can be easily formed. Therefore, the bubble jet recording method is now widely used in printers, copying machines, facsimile machines or another office equipment, and for industrial systems such as textile printing device or the like.
For such a bubble jet recording method, a proposal was made to employ a structure incorporating a movable member such as a valve or the like in a flow path in order to improve the ejection efficiency.
For example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 63-199972 describes a method for producing valve elements in an ink jet recording head with valves in flow paths.
In this publication patterns of the valves are formed by photolithography of a photosensitive resin or the like.
Further, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 63-197652 describes a method for producing valves in an ink jet recording head with check valves provided on the upstream side of the flow paths.
In this publication, the valves are integrally formed with a substrate, utilizing parts of the substrate, by photolithography.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 6-31918 (U.S. Pat. No. 5,278,585) discloses a method for producing an ink jet head having one-way valves. This is the method for producing the ink jet head having a silicon substrate and movable members patterned by photolithography and processed by anisotropic etching. This publication also discloses a method for forming the movable members of a silicon dioxide layer in the silicon substrate, a method for forming the movable members in a surface region of a silicon wafer by implantation or diffusion of boron, a method for forming the movable members by patterned etching stop occurring because of implantation of boron, and so on.
As the background art of the present invention there was a background art subject to enhance the fundamental ejection characteristics up to a conventionally unexpected level, from a conventionally inconceivable standpoint, in the basically conventional method for ejecting the liquid by forming a bubble (particularly, a bubble formed by film boiling) in a liquid flow path.
With this background art subject, some of the present inventors came to find that the most significant factor to considerably improve the ejection characteristics was to take account of a growing component downstream of the bubble, based on the consideration of influence of energy given by the bubble per se on an ejection amount. Namely, it was found that the ejection efficiency and ejection speed could be improved by efficiently directing the component downstream of bubble into a direction of ejection. Based on this finding, the inventors came to an extremely high technical level, when compared with the conventional technical level, to positively move the downstream component of bubble to the free end side of the movable member.
Further, it was also found that it was preferred to take account of structural elements such as the movable member and liquid flow path related to growth of bubble on the downstream side in a heating region for forming the bubble, for example, on the downstream side from the center line passing the center of the area of an electrothermal transducer in the direction of flow of liquid, or at the center of the area of a surface contributing to bubble generation.
Based on the above findings, some of the present inventors invented and already proposed a liquid jet head of an utterly novel structure.
This head has a first path portion in fluid communication with an ejection outlet, a second path portion with an electrothermal transducer provided therein, and a partition wall disposed between the first path portion and the second path portion and having a movable member arranged as displaceable to the first path portion side, in which the first path portion becomes in fluid communication with the second path portion when the movable member is displaced.
This head is arranged to effect ejection in such a way that a bubble is generated through drive of the electrothermal transducer, the movable member comes to be displaced to the first path portion side with growth of the bubble, and the pressure thereof is guided toward the ejection outlet by the movable member displaced.
In the liquid ejecting head using the movable member displaced depending upon the bubble as described above, the head is produced by positioning, jointing and securing through a press (stop) spring a substrate having the electrothermal transducer, side walls of the second path portion, the partition wall having the movable member, a grooved top plate having side walls of the first path portion.
In the above method for producing the liquid ejecting head, a gap, however, may sometimes occur between the partition wall and the second path portion walls because of variations in production. This is not easily checked depending on manufacture control. If the space appeared in this region the pressure for discharging the bubble might escape through this gap so as to cause ejection failure due to insufficient ejection pressure. Since the pressure wave escaping through the gap propagated into adjacent flow paths and fluctuated the liquid therein, variations of ejection amounts might sometimes occur upon continuous drive. A conceivable means for avoiding the occurrence of the gap is to bond the partition wall with the second path portion walls with an adhesive, but it is not preferred because in that case the adhesive could intrude into the space between the movable member and the partition wall so as to disable movement of the movable member.
Further, the above producing method needs positioning among the substrate, the partition wall, and the grooved top plate, so that it takes a lot of time for securing the positioning accuracy.
In view of the background art subject as described above, a specific object of the present invention is to provide a method for producing a movable member, capable of effectively and usefully regulating growth of bubble, applicable to general valves or the new head and the ejection principle described in the prior application filed by the present inventors.
More particularly, a first object of the present invention is to provide a method for producing a head and an apparatus which are easily and cheaply produced with high accuracy and which realize an ideal configuration for the above ejection principle, by constructing the liquid guide paths for supplying a plurality of liquids, of a reduced number of parts.
A second object of the present invention is to provide a production method for-realizing a head in an ideal configuration for the above ejection principle and further to provide a production method improved in production cost and accuracy up to the level of commercial products.
Typical features of the present invention for achieving the above objects are as follows.
According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for producing a liquid ejecting head having an ejection outlet for ejecting a liquid, a heat generating element for applying thermal energy to said liquid, a liquid flow path consisting of a first path portion in fluid communication with said ejection outlet and a second path portion located below said first path portion, in a bottom surface of which said heat generating element is positioned, a partition wall for partitioning said liquid flow path into said first path portion and second path portion, and a movable member in said partition wall disposed above said heat generating element so as to be displaceable to a side of the first path portion in accordance with a bubble generated in the liquid by said thermal energy, in which upon generation of said bubble the first path portion is in fluid communication with the second path portion and the pressure is directed toward said ejection outlet by said movable member displaced to eject the liquid droplet, said method comprising a step of preparing a substrate provided with said heat generating element, a step of forming a grooved partition wall having said movable member and side walls of said second path portion, and a step of joining said grooved partition wall to said substrate to form said second path portion.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for producing a liquid ejecting head having an ejection outlet for ejecting a liquid, a heat generating element for applying thermal energy to said liquid, a liquid flow path consisting of a first path portion in fluid communication with said ejection outlet and a second path portion located below said first path portion, in a bottom surface of which said heat generating element is positioned, a partition wall for partitioning said liquid flow path into said first path portion and second path portion, and a movable member in said partition wall disposed above said heat generating element in said partition wall so as to be displaceable to a side of the first path portion in accordance with a bubble generated in the liquid by said thermal energy, in which upon generation of said bubble the first path portion is in fluid communication with the second path portion and the pressure is directed toward said ejection outlet by said movable member displaced to eject the liquid droplet, wherein said movable member is formed by providing said partition wall with a slit and the slit of said movable member is formed by making said partition wall by electroforming.
According to a further aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for producing a liquid ejecting head, having an ejection outlet for ejecting a liquid, a heat generating element for applying thermal energy to said liquid, a liquid flow path consisting of a first path portion in fluid communication with said ejection outlet and a second path portion located below said first path portion, in a bottom surface of which said heat generating element is positioned, a partition wall for partitioning said liquid flow path into said first path portion and second path portion, and a movable member disposed above said heat generating element in said partition wall so as to be displaceable in accordance with a bubble generated in the liquid by said thermal energy, wherein said movable member is formed by providing said partition wall with a slit and the slit of said movable member is formed by making said partition wall by electroforming.
According to a further aspect of the present invention, there is provided a liquid ejecting head having an ejection outlet for ejecting a liquid, a heat generating element for applying thermal energy to said liquid, a liquid flow path consisting of a first path portion in fluid communication with said ejection outlet and a second path portion located below said first path portion, in a bottom surface of which said heat generating element is positioned, a partition wall for partitioning said liquid flow path into said first path portion and second path portion, and a movable member disposed above said heat generating element in said partition wall so as to be displaceable to a side of the first path portion in accordance with a bubble generated in the liquid by said thermal energy, in which upon generation of said bubble the first path portion is in fluid communication with the second path portion and the pressure is directed toward said ejection outlet by said movable member displaced to eject the liquid droplet, wherein the partition wall provided with said movable member is integrally formed with side walls of the second path portion.
According to a further aspect of the present invention, there is provided a head cartridge having the liquid ejecting head as described above and a liquid container.
According to a further aspect of the present invention, there is provided a liquid ejecting apparatus having the liquid ejecting head as described above and driving signal supply means for supplying a driving signal for ejecting the liquid from the liquid ejecting head.
According to a further aspect of the present invention, there is provided a liquid ejecting apparatus having the liquid ejecting head as described above and recording medium carrying means for carrying a recording medium for receiving the liquid ejected from the liquid ejecting head.
According to a further aspect of the present invention, there is provided a head kit comprising the liquid ejecting head as described above and a liquid container for containing the liquid to be supplied to the liquid ejecting head.
According to a further aspect of the present invention, there is provided a head kit having the liquid ejecting head as described above, a liquid container for containing the liquid to be supplied to the liquid ejecting head, and liquid filling means for filling the liquid into the liquid container.
According to a further aspect of the present invention, there is provided a recorded material having received an ink ejected as the liquid by the liquid ejection recording method as described above.
The above characteristic features of the present invention enabled the movable member, capable of effectively and usefully regulating growth of a bubble for general valves or the ejection principle of the novel head described in the prior application, to be accurately produced at low cost and with a reduced number of parts at the level of practical use as commercial products, and provided the head to exhibit the maximum effect also in the conventional ejection principle.
In more detail, by preliminarily integrally forming the partition wall having the movable member with the walls of the second path portion, no gap will possibly be formed between the partition wall and the walls of the second path portion, and a number of steps in manufacturing the liquid ejecting head can be decreased, thus improving the manufacturing throughput.
Further, since the slit width or the like can be precisely processed by forming the partition wall and the movable member separated in the predetermined slit width from the partition wall by electroforming, the ejecting liquid can accurately be ejected by a desired amount by displacing the movable member in accurate response to the pressure raised by bubble generation of the liquid receiving heat from the electrothermal transducer, which permits formation of high-quality image.
The other effects of the present invention will be understood from the description of the embodiments.
In the specification, the terms xe2x80x9cupstreamxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cdownstreamxe2x80x9d are defined with respect to a general liquid flow from a liquid supply source through the liquid flow paths to the ejection outlet or are expressed as expressions as to the direction in this structure.
Further, a xe2x80x9cdownstream sidexe2x80x9d portion of the bubble itself represents an ejection-outlet-side portion of the bubble which directly functions mainly to eject a liquid droplet. More particularly, it means a downstream portion of the bubble in the above flow direction or in the direction of the above structure with respect to the center of the bubble, or a bubble appearing in the downstream region from the center of the area of the heat generating element.
In this specification, xe2x80x9csubstantially sealedxe2x80x9d generally means a sealed state in such a degree that when a bubble grows, the bubble does not escape through a gap (slit) around the movable member before motion of the movable member.
In this specification, xe2x80x9cpartition wallxe2x80x9d may mean a wall (which may include the movable member) interposed to separate the region in direct fluid communication with the ejection outlet from the bubble generation region, and more specifically means a wall separating the liquid flow path including the bubble generation region from the liquid flow path in direct fluid communication with the ejection outlet, thereby preventing mixture of the liquids in the respective liquid flow paths.